


a dog is a girl's best friend

by handschuhmaus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, mostly marauder era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:14:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22143940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: This is a story about Peregrin and Laurel Evans, and why and how Laurel's daughter Arietta Evans ended up in his brother Perry's house, and so it's also a story about Slytherin's bastard scion Thomasine Gaunt, left in a London orphanage, and about how Ethan Prince taught his daughter and Laurel about magic. And about Arietta's mother's friends, the ones who were anything but friendly to Severa Prince.
Kudos: 2





	a dog is a girl's best friend

**Author's Note:**

> so. once (not too long ago) there was a work that was ~~...quite possibly taken down due to copyright concerns over being~~ an almost pure genderswap (I...think Voldemort may have been an exception, which...is a shame) reskin of canon. No other changes.
> 
> Other people have expressed irritation at when cis-swaps make a character suddenly highly normative to a different gender (someone else has noted, using the not very familiar to me but still memorable example of Dean Winchester, that in agab-swapping a highly gender-normative character, some of the options are: you can stick with that gender norm, in which case they are likely non-conforming, or you could also stick with normativity for their assigned gender... and of course there's additional variants) and this was quite the opposite of that. But...
> 
> Here's a thing: Mr. and Mrs. Evans, (or are they Dursley-Evans or Evans-Dursley or even still Dursley because Evans is now a wizarding name?) ~~househusband~~ stay-at-home-dad and some kind of company executive, of 4 Privet Drive, are inherently and inevitably different to Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, 4 Privet Drive, SAHM and Grunnings executive. Because being a stay at home dad still isn't their canon-preferred level of normal in 2020 much less in 1981. And women executives, especially if you don't shy away into feminine product industries... _9 to 5_ is from 1980. There's something very...feminist about it.
> 
> But so--so are Mr. and Mrs. Prince, with Severa's Muggle mum (more likely to fall into an unfortunate cliche, kind of, too), not to mention just. Tamsin Gaunt(? Riddle?) in ways I don't often explore when I write her (and how's she get disassociated from the Riddles...?) and even Dumbledore. Toerag Jane Potter?? Which is--major.
> 
> This is... an excursion in that AU, but it also isn't, because without altering the setting itself to different gender norms, such changes have weight.
> 
> (I do want to point out, because it pains me, that any improvements in characters' abusive situations/personalities is probably because it's me, always weak for that, writing this, rather than referring to a correlation between attachment to a magical family only through your mother and not being seen as good in-universe, which is somewhat present in canon. Also, like...the prejudice against the Dursleys for their size? Not. cool.)

Once upon a time there were two brothers, the sons of Harriet and Ross Evans. Laurel Evans was a nice boy, generally polite and neat as boys go, and never got scoldings for getting his clothes messy, because he almost never did. One day in the park he met a young girl who stared at him. She looked... poor, and he went over to talk to her. 

Peregrin Evans ( _please_ , call him Perry) didn't like the look of the girl, and was fairly sure she might draw Laurel into trouble. Ever since Laurel, his parents' perfect son, had come home from the hospital, he had felt inadequate and displaced. But nothing he cared to do seemed capable of fixing things, and no matter how much Laurel associated with a poor girl, their parents wouldn't actually scold him for that.

But the story doesn't _start_ there.

* * *

Ethan Prince was almost excellent at potions and Gobstones at Hogwarts, but he was sallow and sullen and not quite handsome. But Azalea Malfoy, with the beautiful golden hair and the aristocratic nonchalance associated with him anyway, and some figured he'd be marrying Tamsin Riddle--er, Gaunt, the bastard and hauntingly striking child of the last of the Gaunts. 

Instead he went walking through a wood in the north of England and emerged by the farm pond where Tabitha Snape was trying to catch fish. For dinner, specifically, 'cause her mom the once war nurse was away working twelve hour shifts, and her da, even though he'd taught her to fish, wasn't interested in the shopping after a shift at the factory, especially with his old mining injury. Ethan's soft voice wasn't a good fish attractant, and Tabitha had sworn herself too sensible to be swept up by a prince and yet...

The Princes didn't attend the wedding and it became clear that they weren't going to support Ethan if he carried on in such a notion, and Tabitha, wiry and strong and very, very sensible, had had to help him put up a bunch of tables in the cellar of their new little house. She didn't understand how he made his money, or the fact that Severa Prince was almost all her father's child. They were, effectively, quite poor, even though Tabitha wanted to work, and did (how did it seem natural, ever since she stopped nursing the kid, for Ethan Prince, soft spoken and tongue dagger-sharp, to raise his daughter?) 

Ethan told Severa she was a witch, and a Prince, not like in the fairy stories, but of an old family; and he brewed potions hour after hour in the cellar, limp locks of hair hanging down his cheek and sticking in the sweat.

* * *

That was how Severa knew to tell Laurel he was a wizard, and that wasn't an insult but it did irritate Peregrin, despite or perhaps because he had been named after a hobbit. 

From then on, Severa and Laurel were the closest of friends, the girl with a solemn face and the boy with the flame red hair. Severa looked at Laurel like he was the prince, instead of her, like Peregrin's brother was magical. 

And one day, a few years later, an old woman with short white hair and the most outlandish set of academic robes Perry Evans could imagine paid a visit to the Evans house. Albia Dumbledore, she said, and her face lit up when Laurel demonstrated something strange--moving the furniture or something.

Laurel got to go to boarding school, because he was a wizard. Perry screwed up his eyes and his courage and asked Professor Dumbledore if there could be room for him there as well. Albia Dumbledore laughed, saying something about how he wasn't magic. Something curled up and withered in Peregrin Evans' heart then.

* * *

There were six girls sorted into Gryffindor House that year, from the utterly expected Jane Potter and the reasonable choice Cynara Lupin to the completely surprising Ursa Black, with whom Jane thought at first she'd get along with like--how had Mother put it?--a house on fire. She did not--that is, Ursa and Jane rapidly became friends, like sisters. Both from pureblood houses, even if one was Slytherin, both with dark and wild hair. (Jane had coaxed her parents to let her get hers cut really short; Ursa had no such fortune.) Cynara was timid and bookish, and Penny Pettigrew a nervous mess who kept petting her rat, called something long and outlandish beginning with Mel-. Francis Longbottom, however, knew the other girl, which none of the rest of them did, and has taken her to a corner of the common room where none of them could overhear.

Severa Prince went to Slytherin, and there was a ready enmity between her and the Gryffindor girls. Jane's parents were indulgent. Ethan was...not, exactly, and he had seen the way Slytherin house treated Tamsin Gaunt, later fled to remote parts of the continent (perhaps beyond the Iron Curtain) and so naturally he taught Severa to be defensive. But worse than that, she was quiet and serious with a Northern accent that came out in high emotion and she had the ear of one of the handsomest boys in Gryffindor House. 

Laurel's letter home that first September said, fancifully, that if it weren't the 1970s he thought he would have one day married Severa. Perry, who was torn between finding Ethan Prince admirable and terrible, wondered how on earth that would go, having been observant enough to realize that the Prince marriage didn't follow the expected outline, for a man born to the aristocracy and his working class wife.

**Author's Note:**

> ...there should be more dogs in future chapters
> 
> but WHEN will it be continued?? I have no idea ~~as is so often the case.~~


End file.
